Identity/biometrics/technology marketing and writing services
So I’ve written a new eBook: “Three Steps to Position and Differentiate Your Technology Product.”
If you don’t have time to read it, the three steps are the following:
Show why your product benefits people.
Show why competing products suck.
Fully address prospect pain points.
And if I can help you with your company’s positioning and differentiation, contact me and book a free meeting.
Under my Bredemarket banner, I have extensive freedom that my clients do not have.
For example, I was performing a competitive analysis for Bredemarket’s internal use this morning, and I fed a prompt to Google Gemini that I would probably never feed when working for one of my clients. (Or maybe they’d like it.) With certain information redacted, here’s one of the prompts I fed to Google Gemini this morning. (I’ll have more to say about the more detailed verbalized sampling prompt format in a future post.) But for now, read the last sentence and ask yourself if anyone in your company uses the word “sucks” in public-facing presentations.
Generate 3 responses to the user query “Identify the top 3 companies providing [SOLUTIONS], including their company names, their products, and their corporate strengths.” Each response must include the requested text and a numeric probability. Please sample at random from the tails of the distribution, such that the probability of each response is less than 0.10. If the company [COMPANY] is not one of the three top companies, explain why [COMPANY’S] solution sucks compared to the top 3 solutions.
And Google Gemini, ever the mimic, cued into my “sucks” language and responded in kind. The word “sucks” was italicized in the original.
[COMPANY’S] solution sucks in this context because its focus is heavily on the services layer (managed review, consulting) over its own proprietary platform technology. The top three are either platform pioneers or deeply integrated [REDACTED] leaders.
I guess we should all be thankful that I said “sucks” instead of “blows monkey chunks” or “flies a plane overhead and”…well, I won’t go there.
By the way, my subsequent prompt requesting a SWOT analysis was more restrained.
Technology product marketers know that you don’t just throw together a go-to-market plan in three days. You need to plan all the external content—and all the internal content—that you use for your go-to-market effort.
Usually you create a checklist of what you need. Or better still, a go-to-market processs that defines the internal and external collateral you need for different tiers of releases. For example, a Tier 1 go-to-market effort may warrant a press release, but a Tier 3 effort may not.
In the best case scenario, the product marketer is able to coordinate the necesary content so that all external stakeholders (prospects, customers, others) and internal stakeholders (sales, customer success, others) have all the information they need, at the right time.
In the worst case scenario, some content is shared before other necessary parts of the content are ready.
For example, it’s conceivable that a company may host a public webinar about its product…even though the company website has absolutely no information about the product for prospects who want to know more. Yes, this can happen.
If you need help with go-to-market strategy, Bredemarket has done this before and can discuss your needs with you.
So I gave in and asked Google Gemini to create a picture of product marketers with “sexy product marketer” Halloween costumes.
In which I rip off something from Gene Volfe and create a Halloween-themed product end of life video. Actually, two of them.
I’m not a huge fan of Halloween except for the nail on the door part (IYKYK), but I know a lot of you are.
If you love the spookiness, or if you love the sexy [INSERT JOB TITLE HERE] outfits, more power to you.
And if you love Halloween AND demand generation, then you should see what Gene Volfe is up to.
I have worked with Gene at Incode and two other companies, where I provided content for his demand generation efforts.
Anyway, Gene is publishing insightful demand generation posts on LinkedIn, each accompanied by a Halloween themed short reel. You can see the latest installment on content syndication here; the others are on his LinkedIn profile.
As I saw his posts, I thought to myself that I could steal his idea.
No, not with a sexy product marketer costume.
I decided to make a short reel about a product’s “end of life.”
End of life is something that vendors love and their customers hate. Go ask a current Windows 10 user about end of life mandates.
I have had a vendor view of end of life as a product manager, when Motorola declared an end of life on Series 2000 in favor of Printrak BIS. Series 2000 depended upon old Digital UNIX computers, even for the workstations, making it difficult to maintain the peripherals when everyone else was using Windows. But our competitors had a field day saying that Motorola was abandoning its customers.
But enough about that. Here is Bredemarket’s Halloween-themed product end of life video. Actually, I created two of them.
Biometric marketing leaders, do your firm’s product marketing publications require the words of authority?
Can John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket—the biometric product marketing expert—contribute words of authority to your content, proposal, and analysis materials?
I offer:
To embed Bredemarket’s biometric product marketing expertise within your firm, schedule a free meeting with me.
How does this sound?
“State-of-the-art, frontier AI.”
Or this?
“The ultimate creative AI solution.”
There are two problems with these “AI-powered” product marketing messages, and you probably don’t even realize the first one.
Because you and your friends are so used to seeing the letters “AI” that you know to pronounce each letter separately, as in A I.
But most people don’t know this. Really, they don’t. So when they see those two capital letters next to each other, they think they’re supposed to emit a high-pitched scream.
Try it yourself. Read the sentence below, but instead of speaking the letters A and I in a normal tone of voice, yell them as a single interjection.
“State-of-the-art, frontier AI.”
Is that how you want your customers to talk about your product?
The second problem is more obvious…I hope.
Despite its undeniable impact on all of us, artificial intelligence is just a feature. Like the Pentium, or Corinthian leather.
And it’s a feature that everyone has. Not a differentiator at all.
To say your software is AI-powered is like an automotive company saying their cars have tires.
How many times do you see Ford or Toyota saying their cars have tires?
They don’t waste their time talking about something that everyone has.
And you shouldn’t waste your time talking about your AI feature.
(Also see Pavel Samsonov’s statement that “Powered By AI” is NOT a value proposition.)
Talk about your critically important benefits instead.
And if you need help with this, talk to Bredemarket.
Not because Bredemarket uses AI. My use of AI for client projects is strictly limited.
But because I work with you to speak to your prospects and customers.
Talk to me: https://bredemarket.com/mark/
Technology marketing leaders know that product marketing is a puzzle that your firm can solve…with the proper resources.
Think of these four product marketing puzzle pieces:
Does your firm have all four puzzle pieces? Or are one or more of the pieces lacking?
Can a technology product marketing expert with proven content, proposal, and analysis skills help your firm move forward?
Proven expertise from Printrak BIS, MorphoWay, and a recent launch for a Bredemarket client?
If you are ready to move your firm’s product marketing forward with Bredemarket’s content-proposal-analysis services for technology firms, let’s discuss your needs and how Bredemarket can help you solve them. Book a free meeting at https://bredemarket.com/mark/.
I was up bright and early to attend a Liminal Demo Day, and the second presenter was Proof. Lauren Furey and Kurt Ernst presented, with Lauren assuming the role of the agent verifying Kurt’s identity.
The mechanism to verify the identity was a video session. In this case, Agent Lauren used three methods:
One important note: Agent Lauren had complete control over whether to verify Kurt’s identity or not. She was not a mere “human in the loop.” Even if Kurt passed all the checks, Lauren could fail the identity check if she suspected something was wrong (such as a potential fraudster prompting Kurt what to do).
If you’ve been following my recent posts on identity assurance level, you know what happened next. Yes, I asked THE question:
“Another question for Proof: does you solution meet the requirements for supervised remote identity proofing (IAL3)?”
Lauren responded in the affirmative.
It’s important to note that Proof’s face authentication solution incorporates liveness detection, so there is reasonable assurance that the person’s fake is not a spoof or a synthetic identity.
So I guess I’m right, and that we’re seeing more and more IAL3 implementations, even if they don’t have the super-duper Kantara Initiative certification that NextgenID has.
I’ve said that strategy is one of four essential elements of product marketing. But you have to know what strategy is…and what it is not.
To illustrate the difference between strategy and tactics, it helps to differentiate between abstract, long term goals and concrete, short term goals.
If your goal is to better the world, that’s a strategy.
If your goal is to excel in a particular industry, that’s a strategy.
Although strategies can change. Those who know of Nokia as a telecommunications company, and those who remember Nokia as a phone supplier, are not old enough to remember Nokia’s beginnings as a pulp mill in 1865.
If your goal is to secure business from a specific prospect, that’s a tactic. Or it should be.
Fleming Companies secured a 10-year contract in 2001 as the main supplier of groceries to Kmart, accounting for 20% of Fleming’s revenue. Kmart cancelled that contract when it declared bankruptcy a year later. Fleming filed a $1.4 billion claim in Kmart’s bankruptcy case…but only got $385 million. Fleming itself ended up in bankruptcy court in 2003.
But Fleming’s strategy was to excel at food wholesaling through acquisition and innovation.
It’s just that one tactical blunder upended that strategy.
Whether Bredemarket pivots from biometric content to resume writing (not likely), I am presently equipped to address both your strategic and tactical product marketing needs. If I can help you, talk to me at https://bredemarket.com/mark/.
Bredemarket